That night I stayed at the hotel, cleaning off the grime from the last several days.  

When I was done drying off, I pulled out the box of kids crayons and paper that I got from the restaurant. It took me an hour to draw out the circle for the Detection magic that would locate the marker I had previously Embroidered onto my backpack.  

I used the rest of the night charging all the beads I pulled out from my cloths. Since I wouldn’t be able to channel the required amount of mana, I would be using the beads to make up for the difference that the Detection magic required. After the beads were charged, I went to sleep. No point to casting the detection magic if I couldn’t go after my pack right away. 

In the morning I laid out the local map I had grabbed from the brochure rack in the lobby of the motel onto the rooms small table. It took a bit of fiddling to make sure the map was orientated in the same direction with the buildings outside and fit in the circle I had drawn last night. 

The Detection magic I was going to cast was as bare bones as I could make it. Usually, the spell would orientate itself to the map or borrow from Elemental or Illusion magic to create a 3D model or a hologram of the surrounds. In this case I couldn’t afford the mana cost for any of the useful frills. 

With the mana from the beads to supplement my meager channelling capacity, a small red dot appeared on the map. I quickly marked with a crayon before the magic faded since I couldn’t keep up the cost to search such a large area. 

I jumped when the paper the circle was built on suddenly ignited. I grabbed the map before it caught, swept the burning paper into the waste basket and put out the flames with some water from the bathroom. 

-Damn. The wax crayon must have got too hot, melted and caught on fire. 

I quickly opened the windows and door to let out the remaining smoke before checking the map again. It looked like the mark on the pack was located near one of the forestry roads that lead into the mountains. 

…. 

Several hours of hiking later I found my pack at the bottom of a steep incline that dropped off from the side of a forestry road. Given the amount of garbage that was piled around, I guessed that it was a popular spot to dump stuff that the locals couldn’t get rid of normally. 

The pack had landed against a ripped-up couch with most of my cloths shoved roughly into it. With a bit of searching, I found the green tarp further up the slope caught in some shrubs and my memory plastic chair broken, under a splintered table.  

After half a day searching, I found the LED and solar panels (smashed), the plastic memory cylinder that I stored the prisms for the microscope (ok), and several pieces of my camping gear (banged up). The jade block, my notes, the rest of the camping gear, the memory plastic microscope body, and the gold were all missing. 

…. 

As I was walking back into town, an oversized SUV flashed its blue and red lights and pulled up against the sidewalk next to me. I ignored it and kept walking. I heard some swearing from inside the vehicle before the driver's side door opened and Chief got out and yelled. 

“Callows! Stop where you are!”-Chief 

I looked around, noting that there were other people around, and yelled back. 

“Why? Are you going to arrest me under false charges again or just going to shoot me this time?”-Me 

I kept walking, pissed off and trusting that modern guardsmen had to look like they followed the “rules”. I did not need to see Chief to know that his face was probably scowling in anger. 

“I said stop you little shit!”-Chief 

I turned around and yell back at him as he stepped on to the sidewalk headed in my direction. 

“And who the fuck are you! You still haven’t shown me a badge, now or when you arrested me after your nephew and his buddies tried to beat the shit out of me!”- Me 

I kept the volume up so the now visibly interested onlookers would hear everything. Chief’s steps got longer as he strode faster towards me. I slung my pack off to the side, but his eyes remained on me not taking any special interest of it. 

-Damn, I was hoping that he was part of stealing my stuff. Then I would have reason to deal with him on equal terms. 

As Chief stormed up to me, I could see he had also noticed that we had attracted a lot of attention. He was visibly trying to control his temper, and not doing a good job of it. He stopped right in front of me, attempting to intimidate by standing too close. 

“I don’t know why you came back, but you shouldn’t have.”-Chief 

I smiled. 

“HI!  I'm Steven Callows! Odd that I don’t know your name seeing as you’ve already kidnapped me once!”-Me 

Chief leaned a bit towards me and growled. 

“I arrested you punk, and I can do it again.”-Chief 

I narrowed my eyes at Chief. 

“No, only cops can arrest someone.”-Me 

“Can’t you see my uniform? I am a Cop!”-Chief 

“You mean the same costume you were wearing when your nephew nearly killed the teenage waiter at the Cheese Man?”-Me 

Chiefs' eyes went wide with rage, and I could see him reaching down to his belt. 

-Hit me you stupid fucker, so I can beat your ass in front of witnesses! 

Chief must have seen something in my face, because he paused, looked around and realised how many people were watching. 

“Leave town and don’t come back if you know what's good for you.”-Chief 

Chief growled in a low voice before he turned around and headed back to his vehicle. 

“Leave or what? You’ll find something else your nephew did and pin it on me again?”-Me 

I saw his shoulders tense at my parting shot, but he kept walking. Slamming the SUV door closed he hammered down on the gas and speed off. I shouldered my pack and continued on my way towards the town's library/community center. 

A little time in the library before it closed got me the mailing address for officer Timmons, and a quick stop at the town's hardware/everything store netted me some new glass and metal beads. I also picked up a new embroidery kit with various threads, and a new notebook. With a quick check in the bins behind the hardware/everything store I found some broke plastic chairs which I could remold and enchant to replace my missing camping pieces. 

As the light faded, I set up the green tarp in an empty field just outside of town. I also set up the magical equivalent of flash bangs around the tarp before hiding under a nearby tree with a “everything is normal here” Embroidery charm hanging from its branches. The charm wasn’t very powerful, but in the dark, it wouldn’t have to be. 

I had expected a long cold wait till early in the morning, but I was pleasantly surprised when an old, beaten-up truck pulled off the road, just before 11pm. Four men got out carrying bats and walked into the field, heading directly for the tarp. 

-I wonder if these guys really know how predictable they are? Did Chief send them, or did they brainstorm this farce themselves? 

I could hear low voices as they walked, one of them laughing quietly at something the lead guy said. None of them even bothered to looked around let alone look towards where I was hiding under the tree. When they got closer to the tarp they slowed down, and I could hear what they were saying. 

“Chuck, you and Flint grab him and drag him out. Me and Greg will hit him when you have him.”-Guy1 

I recognised the voice of Guy1 as he gestured “forward” to the others. It was the guy that knocked the teenage waiter into the glass case, Chief's nephew. A nasally voice whispered back. 

“Just don’t knock him out when you hit him. I want to make him cry for what he did to my face.”-Chuck 

Chuck and the last guy moved slowly towards the tarp with their bats raised. I smiled and used Enhancement magic to boost my capabilities as they crept along in a rather poor attempt at sneaking. Just as they got to the tarp, I set off the first flash bang at the tarp`s door. 

I opened my eyes after the flash passed, already running towards the four men. In the fading light I recognised the last two from the restaurant. Greg aka Guy2, the milkshake recipient, was at the back beside Guy1. My first target was Greg, who had dropped his bat and was slightly hunched over rubbing his eyes. I felt slightly sorry for him when I planted my foot between his legs, sending him into a tight little wheezing ball.  

-Four on one, you guys lost the right to any mercy from me. 

I grabbed the bat he had dropped and swung it the back of Guy1’s knees. He must not have gotten the full flash affect from the magic flash bang, as he turned his head towards me as I started swinging. He tried to bring his bat around, but it was too late. My swing hammered the back of his knees with a sharp thud. Guy1 screamed as his knees bent and he fell backward, pinching the bat in his legs.  

I abandoned the bat and ran towards Chuck and Flint, aka Guy4. Both of them had got the full brunt of the flash bang and were both hunched over. Chuck had dropped his bat and was visibly reeling while Flint was still holding his bat and trying to rub his eyes at the same time. 

I grabbed the back of Flint’s neck and used Elemental magic to pass a high voltage, low amp electric bolt to pass between my fingers. I made sure to turn it off before I let go of the quivering, ridged Flint. The arks would make a cool effect, but the electrical burns they left hurt. 

When I let go Flint dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. I turned to Chuck to see him flailing around, tears streaming down from his very blackened eyes curtesy of the back of the booth that I had slammed his face into at the Cheese Man. He was yelling over the ringing in his ears. 

“Fuck! I can’t see! Someone grab the fucker! I’m going to kill him!”-Chuck 

I didn’t feel at all sorry when I hammered my fist into his bruise blackened face. 

….. 

The morning commute through town had an extra attraction when the four were found hanging naked and upside down from trees on the main road. “Chief’s favorite little boy” was written across Mike’s, aka Guy1’s, chest. The empties from the case of beer in the truck lay around the ground after I poured the bottles over them. I'm’ sure the local wasps appreciated my extra effort to marinade their breakfast. 

Their wallets had given me a little extra cash before they were thrown into a river after I had made a note of their addresses. I left the truck running on the side of the road. 

I made sure to stay out of town, and out of anyone's sight for the day. I didn’t want to tempt Chief into arresting me again. Given my little note I left on his nephew, I'm sure if he got his hands on me this time, I’d be suffering from several “clumsy falls” down multi flight stairs. Staying out of the way also gave me time to recover from my use of Enhancement magic during the one-sided beating. I had pushed a little too hard and my body was feeling the strain.  

Later, when dark fell, I checked out officer Timmons house. When the street was clear, I marked both of the cars in the driveway. This way I would be able to use detection magic to track them later if I needed too. Next was checking on the yard. 

As I was walking beside the house, I could hear Timmons and a woman arguing inside the house. Just as I was looking around the corner into the back yard, I heard the front door slam from the front yard and one of the car’s start up. When I got back to the front of the house, I could see Timmons in the driver seat as the car pulled out onto the street and speed away. I could hear the woman inside of the house yelling, which soon changed to crying.  

-Domestic problems? I’m more surprised that he’s not divorced, living out of a seedy one room motel. 

Now that I knew there was someone in the house, I hung out at the bus stop across the street and waited. I had only been watching the house for an hour before most of the lights went out, and a woman walked out the front door. She was dressed in a lowcut dress and high heels, seriously made up with some where to go. She drove off down the street at a slower pace. 

With a quick use of Telekinetic magic to turn the back door’s lock, I stepped into Timmons’ dark house. A bit of Enhancement magic adjusted my eyes and let me see in the dark as walked into a small kitchen. There wasn’t any dog bowls on the floor so that was one worry gone as I moved on to searching the house. I soon found my dark green cube sitting on a desk in the next room, holding down a stack of loose papers, it fit awkwardly into my pocket. 

-That confirms Timmons grabbed my stuff, now where is my gold? 

I grabbed a black page from the printer on a shelf by the wall and put it on the desk next to my new notebook. Copying the detection circle that I had designed earlier today, I cast a modified version of my detect metal spell. Black arrows were charred into the paper by the spell, pointing to any gold detected in the 10-meter radius. I ignored the very fine lines that probably pointed to the gold in electronics and checked only the thickest lines. One line was significantly wider than the others and I looked in its direction. 

-That looks promising, but which floor is it on? I have got to figure out an easy way to do this in 3D that doesn’t exceed my channelling limit. 

I found the jar with the gold and my original notebook, locked in a gun safe in the basement. I thought the keypad lock was going to be tricky, at least till I really looked at the safe. The hinges were on the outside of the door. A quick use of Elemental magic caused the metal hinges to shear through along their crystalline metal structure, rendered the lock irrelevant.  

I stood looking at the guns inside the safe for minute or two, including the loaded handgun in a holster strapped to the back of the door. I considered what kind of trouble Timmons would be in if one of these were show up at a crime. In the end I decided that any plan involving the guns would be too complicated and prone to failure.  

-I’d rather just beat the crap out of him anyway. 

As I was closing up the gun safe, I noticed how short the door was compared to the safe itself. The base of the safe was around 10cm thick where the door stopped above it. I put the door back to the side and checked the base. 

I checked the outside first, then looked for any hidden latches on the inside. It turned out to be even simpler than I thought, as the base plate on the inside of the safe was loose. All I had to do was pull out the rifles before I could lift out the false bottom. 

There was a stack of files, several USB sticks, a roll of money, and a small notebook. I pulled everything out and started flipping through the files. They looked like case files with notes attached in Timmons’ poor handwriting. The notes, the ones I could decipher, seemed to indicate how he had changed evidence to either make sure of a conviction or to compromise a case. The small notebook was full of names, case numbers, dates, and dollar amounts. A folded piece of paper in the notebook had a bank name, with several account numbers and passwords. 

-He kept everything in his house, all in the same place? Small town villain for you, I guess. 

I kept everything, putting the false bottom and the guns back in before using Elemental magic to get the hinges to realign the metal crystalline structure into one piece again. I also grabbed a couple of cans of soup off a shelf as I passed the kitchen on the way out. Petty, but I was hungry. 

By the time I left the house it was too late to get anything else done so I headed out to the edge of town and set up camp. A few “not my problem” were charms hung from trees to keep me from being disturbed. Fortunately, I got the green tarp up before it started to rain. Unfortunately, the green tarp had suffered some damage when it had been thrown into the illegal dump. Without me around to keep the mana storage beads charged, the Embroidered magic had stopped working and the tarp now had holes and few tears.  

It was still raining in the morning. The light and the many drips only showed how many tears and pin holes the tarp had suffered. When I found that a lot of the Embroidered threads had been broken, I knew that my trusted shelter was no longer repairable. Pissed off, I walked through the rain towards the hardware/everything store, half hoping that Chief or Timmons would spot me. Today my luck wasn’t running to vengeance, as I got to the store without interruption. I thought it was only fitting that the money from the four clowns was paying for my new equipment. 

At the bus depot/general store, it took a half hour to arrange for a box containing my placer gold to be mailed to the assayer company, along with the appropriate paperwork. From everything I had researched earlier, they would buy the gold, pay the tax and deposit the money in my account in up to five working days. 

Much happier, I walked across the street and into the Cheese Man to order breakfast. A middle-aged waitress took my order as I sat at my usual table in the corner. A plate of eggs, two orders of bacon, and an hour let me sort through all the files I had taken from Timons’ safe.  

-Mostly taking bribes to tank investigations, a few to set someone up, and a file with pictures of his wife with another guy. These divorce papers aren't dated, I wonder if he’s just waiting to have enough money before he has them served? 

I looked at the folded paper with the account numbers and passwords, then stuffed everything back into my pack and headed for the library.